01:31 am - Deep Space Nine - It got betterWe kep with watching DS9, but jumping episodes when we found bad ones. The beginning of Season 2 was merely dull, so we skipped to the end of Season 2, to the first episode with the Jem'hadr, and it was much better. Quark quite justifiably called Sisko on how he was treating Quark. Also, that and the first two episodes of Season 3 were all closely connected, and the next one House of Quark was also clear part of the same story arc, so it looks like we've moved from old-style (and to me vastly inferior) episodic tv, so modern long-form storytelling tv. House of Quark was also a whole lot of fun in the sections with Quark, because he was a far more real and less buffonish/butt of joke character, while still definitely being the same character. Also, the plotline with Miles and Keiko was very well done, especially since the resolution was all about how Keiko's career was important and giving her a hobby was obvious insufficient.

No, it's clearly not as good as Leverage, seasons 2 or 3 of Fringe or various other examples of the best of modern geeky tv, but it's up there with current Agents of SHIELD - fun, moderately good, but also definitely not awesome, which is vastly better than I expected it to be after watching the first 8 episodes.

Also, I've been meaning to write about Jupiter Ascending, which I saw a couple of weeks ago. It was far more fun than good, but it was definitely fun. The protagonist ending with with a spoiler - highlight to read: winged werewolf boyfriend, was both funny and fun, and I liked how she was flying on her own at the end. Having the villains be baroque space uber-capitalists was also quite enjoyable, I'm surprised that the far right hasn't objected.

However, I did see one somewhat interesting, if also unfortunate, problem. Both of the actual villains were white men, which given the overall small cast meant that there weren't all that many female character with significant roles, and there were almost no people of color. Among other things, it left Kalique as a bit of a non-entity in a film that otherwise did quite well with female characters, except for Jupiter being a bit too passive for my tastes.

I completely understand the use of rich white men and villains, and it's definitely a vast improvement over the wealth of ludicrously decadent and often twistedly villainous black and mixed race villains found in so many mid 90s action-y films, but it also leaves fewer spots for actors of color.